Basic Trope: Having a dangerous creature/person attack your companions in order to save your own skin.
- Straight: Alice and Bob are trapped in a room with a hostile alien near the exit. Alice pushes Bob at the alien and bolts for the door while it's killing him.
- Exaggerated: Alice is trapped in a spaceship with a hostile alien near the airlock. Alice jettisons the alien to save herself, knowing it will fall to Earth and probably kill everyone.
- Downplayed: Alice and Bob are trapped in a room with a hostile alien near the exit. Alice pushes Bob at the alien...right after giving him some kind of weapon.
- Justified: Bob was the one who brought the alien to Earth and bound it here against its will; killing him will send it back home, so Alice is perfectly fine with pushing him at it to save herself.
- Inverted: Alice and Bob are trapped in a room with a hostile alien near the exit. Alice throws herself at the alien, yelling at Bob to get to the exit while it's busy killing her.
- Subverted: Alice locks Bob inside a room with the alien, seemingly to save herself. But later she reveals that she's reached the control room and uses the ship's weapons system to finally destroy the monster.
- Double Subverted: Alice then reveals that the alien's death releases spores that turn anyone nearby into another alien, meaning she will kill Bob after he begins turning.
- Parodied: A husband and wife declare their eternal love for one another and their willingness to die together, but when the husband finishes speaking, he sees his wife waving goodbye from a speedboat while aliens catch him.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob trips mysteriously and is killed by a monster swarm. Throughout the story, the group accuses Alice, the only person near him at the time, of tripping him. Alice professes her innocence, but says that Bob was an asshole and she's not sad that he's gone.
- Averted: No one ever betrays anyone or lets monsters devour innocents.
- Enforced: The author originally wrote the alien lunging for Bob on its own, but the executives think the story would be more dramatic with Alice as a Dirty Coward and suggest her pushing him instead.
- Lampshaded:Alice: Just so you know, if the alien chases us, I'm tripping you.
- Invoked: A villain trying to Divide and Conquer mentions the possibility of needing a "live distraction."
- Exploited: One of the villains makes a group of friends paranoid by claiming that any one of them may betray the group to save themselves.
- Defied: Alice declares that she will never betray her Bob and instead offers herself, but Bob likewise insists that they stick together.
- Discussed: "If this were a horror movie, you'd totally be the guy everybody would be trying to outrun instead of the monster."
- Conversed: "Alice...? Where's Bob? [realizes] Oh no...tell me you didn't!"
Oh sure, go ahead and push me at the main page! Really brave!
